I Believe the Customary Response Is
by Ultracape
Summary: Even when Sarah MacKenzie Rabb is in the family way, she's one hard assed Marine.


"I believe the customary response is…"

By Ultracape

All board appropriate feedback welcome. If you feel the need to make board inappropriate feedback, please email me privately.

Usual disclaimers.

AN: The following is based on a true story. Swear to G-d, cross my heart. That's why I know it could happen.

Big thank you to Aerogirl for doing a beta for me.

Rating: Well, there's some mild reference to sexual activity but that's all.

Summary: Harm and Mac are finding that pregnancy can offer some unique challenges

London:

Early Morning

Eight and a half months after a miracle happened

Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie Rabb decided she needed a new metaphor as she lay, propped up in bed and looked down on her child-swollen body.

'Beached whale' just didn't cut it; neither did elephant or bowling ball, or any number of other words that just meant she was fat, and getting fatter and needed the help of a living derrick better known as her 6 foot 4 husband just to get out of bed.

Captain Harmon Rabb, Jr. bent over to pull his socks on, "But honey, you're beautiful," he said distractedly, nearly by rote to her now-customary complaint.

"Really, I'm really beautiful, huh!"

"I said you are. Have you ever known me to lie to you?"

"Damn it, Harm, how can you bend over like that, tell me I'm beautiful without even looking at me when I can't remember the last time I saw my feet without going through some contortions that would put a fakir to shame?"

Harm just sighed as he stretched towards his other foot, which only irritated his wife more. "So, is it that you're jealous that I can bend over, you're doubting yourself, you wish that I could carry the baby for a while, or you're frustrated because you can't move the way you're used to because we're pregnant?"

Something caught Harm's attention from under the bed. "So that's where they disappeared to," he mused.

He pulled his misplaced aviator sunglasses out from where they had fallen and slipped them on, for lack of any other way to hold them as he attended to putting on his shoes.

"We're pregnant, huh? Well, I don't see how 'we' being pregnant prevents you from doing your usual 15 mile run, going for your quals, or makes you too fat to fit into your favorite dress, or gives you one iota of any type of problem."

Harm could think of a few problems "their being pregnant" was giving him, but marriage had, if nothing else, taught him that occasionally it was better to hold one's tongue - especially when his wife's hormonal surges robbed her of all sense of humor.

"The only favorite dresses I have are the ones I see on you." He honestly did not realize he'd stepped into a minefield.

"Oh, well would it be that slinky red number with the slit up the side that gives your hand easy access to my expanding ass? Or do you prefer that green one with the halter top with similar easy access to my ballooning and painful boobs? Maybe you like that short black form fitting number which made it so easy for you to knock me up in the first place!"

Pausing, Harm smiled at the mental images of Sarah MacKenzie Rabb in any number of gowns he had seen her in, as another sigh escaped his lips.

"Well, I can't fit into any of them," she screeched, "and it's all your fault!"

With his head still down, Harm checked his watch. Her meltdown from the medication she was taking to insure a safe pregnancy, due to the endometriosis she suffered, was due to peak. It had been very rough on her, but like with everything else, his wife had perfect timing and in just about five seconds the tears, self-recriminations and apologies would come. About an hour after that, the love of his life would return to something resembling a normal - whatever that was - human being.

With a final pull of the laces, Harm turned to the mother of his impending child to offer some physical comfort.

Unfortunately, it was at that precise moment that Mac, expert kick boxer that she was, decided she was going to use her legs to leverage herself up in an attempt to sit.

"Youcch! Umph!" Before either one knew what had happened, Mac's heel landed square in Harm's eye, breaking the heretofore-shatterproof glass into a pattern that quickly gained a red coloring.

This would have been bad enough except that his wife's unintentional physical attack had pushed Harm back and to the side so that in falling off the bed he landed on his ass, hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Caught further off guard by that occurrence, and with his height acting as a further obstacle, his momentum carried him onto his back and he hit his head on the wooden valet which held his clothes.

"Oh, G-d, Harm. Oh, G-d, Oh G-d, what have I done? Harm, Harm," Mac yelped in distress, going through those convolutions she had spoken earlier about to get to her fallen husband as fast as she could.

"Ouch," he screamed. Momentarily stunned, Harm didn't even feel pain until Mac, in near total hysteria over what had happened, again managed to step on his bent finger while leveraging herself down to him.

By the time Mac could lower herself, Harm was gingerly picking away the destroyed sunglasses and had determined that his eye had suffered no permanent or serious damage. The relief left him softly chuckling.

As she brushed away his hand, to examine his face, she saw that while blood covered the area around his eye, it appeared to Mac that the glass itself had not shattered but had remained in the bent frame and had made some shallow cuts on his eyelid. However, the frames had caused some deep scratching around his eye socket and her heel had given him what was going to be quite a shiner.

"Harm, sweetheart, talk to me. Oh, Harm, I'm so sorry. You know I love you, oh, honey, do you need a doctor? Oh G-d, where's the phone? I'll call 911."

Finally aware enough to realize that Mac was in more emotional distress than he was physically bruised, head and butt notwithstanding, Harm gingerly moved away from her.

"I'm fine, sweetheart, I'm fine. Just do me a favor and don't move a muscle for a moment."

Crawling about five feet away, a reasonably safe distance he hoped from the jujitsu wrestler in the skin of his wife, he pulled himself up and caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He looked and felt like he'd gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson in the old days. His chuckles suddenly turned into a belly laugh.

Now feeling even more put out by Harm's reactions to her, Mac's tears joined with bubbling anger as she looked way up at him. "You find this funny. I could have killed you and you find this funny?"

Getting his arms under hers and gently pulling her to her feet, Harm helped her sit down next to him on the bed. "Sweetheart, I'm laughing in pure delight."

"What's so delightful about me nearly killing you?"

He smiled at her, hugged her and kissed her passionately on the lips before pulling away.

"You're swollen with our child, you're on a wild emotional roller coaster and you can barely move around without help, but you, my dear love, are still the meanest, leanest, fighting Marine, in the entire military service and a true credit to the Corps."

Kissing her soundly again, he proceeded to the head to clean himself up. He didn't have to look back to feel and know that Lt. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie Rabb, retired, was gracing him with one of her most beautiful, loving and killer smiles.


End file.
